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xi Introduction At the end of the first part of al-Maʿarrī’s Epistle of Forgiveness the author says that he has been “long-winded in this part. Now we shall turn to reply to the letter.” In other words, Part One is merely the introduction to the proper answer to Ibn al-Qāriḥ’s letter. This introduction is in fact what made the Epistle famous, the part that has received the lion’s share and more of the attention of critics and translators. One is reminded of the even lengthier introduction that Ibn Khaldūn wrote several centuries later to his History: this Muqaddimah or Introduction has become a seminal text, one of the great achievements in the intellectual history of the world. Part One of the Epistle of Forgiveness is a text about the idea of forgiveness, cast in the shape of an imaginary narrative in which the protagonist is, unusually, neither a fictional persona nor a thinly disguised version of the author, but the addressee and recipient of the Epistle, Ibn al-Qāriḥ, “the Sheikh.” In Part Two1 al-Maʿarrī turns directly to Ibn al-Qāriḥ’s somewhat rambling letter, commenting on it point by point, topic by topic, in the order in which they appear in the letter. As a result, Part Two is equally rambling, jumping from item to item, without the overarching narrative and the more or less unified theme (in spite of all its digressions) of Part One. One of al-Maʿarrī’s prominent methods in responding to Ibn al-Qāriḥ’s letter is to treat the points made by Ibn al-Qāriḥ with profound and pervading irony, for it is rather obvious that, just as in Part One, the writer is mocking his correspondent . This begins right at the start: when al-Maʿarrī declares the Sheikh to be free of hypocrisy we can be certain that he means exactly the opposite of what he is saying. Much of the rest of the point-by-point reply should be read in the same light. When he objects to the Sheikh’s praise by playing down his own learning, one suspects that he was not unaware of his superior erudition. The clearest instance of mockery is the passage in which he ponders the Sheikh’s potential prowess on the marriage market, if he were to seek a mature spouse in the prime of life. It is impossible to decide to what extent, if at all, the lengthy section on heresy and heretics is to be read as irony. Abū l-ʿAlāʾ is a master of dissembling. xii Introduction Another conspicuous method of al-Maʿarrī in commenting is to take up a theme or even a word and toy with it, in a manner that evokes the well-known description of the sermons of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626); a “Scotish Lord,” asked by King James I how he liked them, replied that2 he was learned, but he played with his Text, as a Jack-an-apes does, who takes up a thing and tosses and playes with it, and then he takes up another, and playes a little with it. Here’s a pretty thing, and there’s a pretty thing! A good example, albeit a rather extreme one, is Ibn al-Qāriḥ’s little story about the eighty-three dinars that were stolen from him by his niece.3 Abū l-ʿAlāʾ begins with congratulating the Sheikh on retrieving his money; then he embarks on a mock eulogy on these dinars in prose, quoting many verses and some anecdotes about dinars, and mentioning a few people called Dīnār, comparing the Sheikh’s dinars favorably with all of these. Next he takes up their number, quoting verses and stories involving the number eighty, followed by general thoughts on gold, and finally about sisters, women, and kinship. Thus an incident that in Ibn al-Qāriḥ’s Arabic is told in some forty words is blown up by our author to a passage of approximately 2,200 words. In all this he displays his usual stupendous erudition. No doubt the author’s ostensible purpose is to honor the Sheikh, but the reader cannot escape the feeling that the real point is to flaunt his vast knowledge and often rather ponderous wit. Moreover, the hyperbolic descriptions and comparisons involving the Sheikh’s coins can be read as a form of ironic mockery of...

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